USPA has a recommendation that you should have 200 jumps before you jump with a camera, and that is an excellent recommendation. Skydivers MAY have enough experience at 200 jumps to do camera (although most do not) - but before 200 jumps it's pretty much a guaranteed bad idea.

There are some other indications that it's a bad idea to jump with a camera, and you may want to reconsider your decision to jump one:

1) You can't stand up all your landings but you have learned how to fall to protect the camera.

2) A lot of your videos from doing POV bigway video are of excellent funnels. You are positive you're not contributing to them but they always seem to happen near you.

3) You spend more time trying to figure out where to put your camera during the exit jamup than where to put your body.

4) You can't really remember the dive until you look at your own video.

5) You post stills from your video to Facebook before packing or debriefing.

6) While in the pattern you fly with your camera pointed at your friend's canopy.

If any of these happen to you, you may want to reconsider jumping with a camera - especially when you're not doing video, you're just a participant on the dive.

USPA has a recommendation that you should have 200 jumps before you jump with a camera, and that is an excellent recommendation. Skydivers MAY have enough experience at 200 jumps to do camera (although most do not) - but before 200 jumps it's pretty much a guaranteed bad idea.

There are some other indications that it's a bad idea to jump with a camera, and you may want to reconsider your decision to jump one:

1) You can't stand up all your landings but you have learned how to fall to protect the camera.

2) A lot of your videos from doing POV bigway video are of excellent funnels. You are positive you're not contributing to them but they always seem to happen near you.

3) You spend more time trying to figure out where to put your camera during the exit jamup than where to put your body.

4) You can't really remember the dive until you look at your own video.

5) You post stills from your video to Facebook before packing or debriefing.

6) While in the pattern you fly with your camera pointed at your friend's canopy.

If any of these happen to you, you may want to reconsider jumping with a camera - especially when you're not doing video, you're just a participant on the dive.

as for the camers, when i started thinking about jumping i started to look at different camera mounts options etc... (i love photography and i make part of my living doing product shots)...but didnt even occurred to me how dangerous it can be to a newbie, and that it will take a lot of time and experience before one can strap gopro.

as for the camers, when i started thinking about jumping i started to look at different camera mounts options etc... (i love photography and i make part of my living doing product shots)...but didnt even occurred to me how dangerous it can be to a newbie, and that it will take a lot of time and experience before one can strap gopro.

Great list, but you are fighting a losing battle against technology, stupidity, and the great world of social media.

20 years ago "jumping a camera" involved a helmet with 40 pounds of gear. We didn't need rules, only truly dedicated masochists got into camera work.

Then Handicams, 8 mm, miniDV, etc. and cameras are down to a pound or two. Today it's the GoPro. Fight it all you want, the next step will be a clip on device the size of a coin sending data wirelessly to a receiver in your pocket.

It's not 5-10 years away, it's possible now - there just isn't a big enough market yet. Wait for the next Facebook - "MeTube: All my life, on the Internet, all the time!" - and you won't be able to tell people they can't have their camera on all the time. How do you regulate that?

I think it is (sadly) unavoidable that focusing on the dive and ignoring the camera will move from common sense to BSRs to part of the FJC in the next few years. So maybe instead of telling newbies they're not allowed to jump cameras, we work on teaching them how to do it safely. That's how everything else in this sport has evolved. Remember "no square canopies with less than 200 jumps?

Great list, but you are fighting a losing battle against technology, stupidity, and the great world of social media.

20 years ago "jumping a camera" involved a helmet with 40 pounds of gear. We didn't need rules, only truly dedicated masochists got into camera work.

Then Handicams, 8 mm, miniDV, etc. and cameras are down to a pound or two. Today it's the GoPro. Fight it all you want, the next step will be a clip on device the size of a coin sending data wirelessly to a receiver in your pocket.

It's not 5-10 years away, it's possible now - there just isn't a big enough market yet. Wait for the next Facebook - "MeTube: All my life, on the Internet, all the time!" - and you won't be able to tell people they can't have their camera on all the time. How do you regulate that?

I think it is (sadly) unavoidable that focusing on the dive and ignoring the camera will move from common sense to BSRs to part of the FJC in the next few years. So maybe instead of telling newbies they're not allowed to jump cameras, we work on teaching them how to do it safely. That's how everything else in this sport has evolved. Remember "no square canopies with less than 200 jumps?

20 years ago "jumping a camera" involved a helmet with 40 pounds of gear. We didn't need rules, only truly dedicated masochists got into camera work.

Then Handicams, 8 mm, miniDV, etc. and cameras are down to a pound or two. Today it's the GoPro. Fight it all you want, the next step will be a clip on device the size of a coin sending data wirelessly to a receiver in your pocket.

I think it is (sadly) unavoidable that focusing on the dive and ignoring the camera will move from common sense to BSRs to part of the FJC in the next few years. So maybe instead of telling newbies they're not allowed to jump cameras, we work on teaching them how to do it safely. That's how everything else in this sport has evolved. Remember "no square canopies with less than 200 jumps?

Hi, I see your points, & your much higher experience in the sport. You're making the Sex Ed argument that kids have this neat new toy. They're going to play w/them... BUT, they have to have at least tacit approval from the DZO to jump a camera @ <200 jumps. I jump at three different DZs. I'd be confronted by a S&TA very quickly at any of them if I tried jumping a camera. I remember another thread where a student was allowed to jump a GoPro w/the DZO's & his AFFI's blessings (?!) in Hollister. Isn't a DZ like that the rare exception? X number of fatalities in X number of years, & the FAA will shut them down. So, DZOs have a vested interest in not having some Newb bounce trying to get the shot.

Yes, things change w/the times. Changing to large square canopies was a safer way of doing things, though. The downsizing is the problem w/that. Big or small, Newbies jumping cameras is never safer. The means to control this behavior are readily available. "Follow the house rules, or jump somewhere else." Or, are there far too many Hollisters out there?